U.S. President George W. Bush strongly defended his foreign policy Tuesday in his final visit to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York, as president.
"Within weeks of September the 11th (of 2001), our armed forces began taking the fight to the terrorists around the world," Bush told West Point cadets. "And we have not stopped."
The president asserted that, in the more than 7 years since the9/11 attacks, the nation and its allies had "applied the full range of military and intelligence assets" to "severely weaken" terrorist networks and kill hundreds of al-Qaida leaders.
At the same time, however, he conceded that the incoming Obama administration will face a volatile situation in a number of hot spots around the globe in the years ahead -- particularly along the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan, where "ungoverned spaces" remain a safe haven for a significant number of Taliban and al-Qaida fighters.
Reviewing what was arguably his most significant decision as president, Bush defended the invasion of Iraq, a move that came under withering criticism at home and abroad.
The president said that while the Iraq war has been "longer and more difficult than expected," his "surge" strategy had worked and that the recently concluded security agreement with the Iraqi government had "set a framework for the drawdown of American forces as the fight in Iraq nears a successful end."
Bush, who will leave office within six weeks, promised that al-Qaida's top leaders would eventually be punished for their role in the 9/11 attacks and the conflicts that followed.
Source:Xinhua
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